Great War of the Roses
by AnonymousInsomnia
Summary: June 28, 1944 - Hi, my name's Ruby Rose and I'm pretty far away from home. Blake, Weiss, my sister, Zwei... They're all missing and I have no idea where I am. On the bright side, this nice man, Captain Barker, is telling me that everything's gonna be all right! I hope everything's gonna be all right...
1. Omaha

**Hello all. If you know who I am from my crossover work, well this is something sorta new I decided to try. I got the idea in my head to write something WW2 or WW1 related, and then RWBY snuck into my brain, as it is wont to do. Anyway, I hope you enjoy. If you like this, let me know and I just might turn it into an actual story, because this is more or less a one-shot.**

 **Disclaimer: If I own RWBY, I'll eat Rooster Teeth's hats.**

* * *

 _Full Summary: June 28, 1944 - Hi, my name's Ruby Rose and I'm pretty far away from home. Blake, Weiss, my sister, Zwei... They're all missing and I have no idea where I am. It's pretty scary here. Everywhere around me there's people fighting and... killing... each other in the empty husks of cities... But! On the bright side, this nice man, Captain Barker, is telling me that everything's gonna be all right! I hope everything's gonna be all right..._

* * *

 _June 6, 1944, Normandy, France._

Private First Class Jeremy Greene's hands trembled as he sat in the Higgins boat as it trembled, buffetted by the waves of a particularly rough sea. The ocean air was more frigid than any wind he'd experienced back home in Minnesota, and his uniform, soaked in the ocean sprays, did nearly nothing to keep the chill from settling into his bones. Greene's fingers were interlocked and he clutched his steel helmet to his stomach, breathing out a whispered prayer that he would make it out of this alive.

The others in the landing craft weren't faring much better. Private Dutch clutched his Garand rifle in white-knuckled hands, compulsively checking, double-checking, and rechecking the weapon's chamber. Corporal Mason held a silver cross in his hand and looked up hopefully at the sky. Private Donnelly just threw up over the side of the boat. The rest of the thirty-three men with Greene were one of those three examples, or some mix of them. The only one who wasn't outwardly terrified was their CO, Captain Barker, who calmly sipped from his flask and, though it was hard for Greene to hear it, hummed to himself as if he wasn't a soldier about to crash into one of the biggest military invasions in the history of warfare. In fact, he looked the same as when he was sitting around back at Schofield- that is, whenever he wasn't looking physically ill as he waded through mounds of paperwork at his desk.

It was Barker who finally broke the silence, which up to that point, had only been permeated with the sharp _click-clack_ of weapons, wet retching, muted whispers, and frantic breathing.

"Hell of a day we've got ourselves into now, right boys?" he muttered. A few heads nodded at his words.

"Thirty seconds!" shouted Connors, the coxswain, "Clear the ramp, now!"

"Keep yourselves stocked, eat your rations, shoot the enemy," Barker said. "Be good little boys out there, and I'll see you on the other side." He capped his flask, tucked it into his shirt, loaded his rifle, and slung it onto his back.

Greene had mentally started counting down the seconds till arrival ever since Connors had warned them.

It was fifteen seconds in when he heard a rather high-pitched, feminine-sounding yelp from somewhere in the back of the boat.

It took him until seven to find a glimpse of red and black fabric amidst the drab greens of the mens' fatigues, and a pair of bright silver eyes staring back at him.

A whistle shrieked at five, and the craft's ramp started to lower.

At three, something slammed into Greene's back and suddenly the boat had a lot more red in it than just the girl that shouldn't've been there at all.

At one, PFC Jeremy Greene hit the floor of the Higgins boat, dead from a 7.92x57mm Mauser bullet to the heart.

* * *

Ruby Rose wasn't having a good day. Not a good day at all.

First, the Huntress-in-training woke up to the sensation of falling onto something that felt colder and harder than ice. She opened her eyes to the sight of men, all wearing olive green clothes, each looking even more sickly than Jaune did on the Bullhead ride to Beacon Academy. Judging by the rocking and battering the thing they were all standing in was experiencing, it was some sort of boat. The men around her also had weapons. That almost made her start fawning over them, but two things stopped her from doing so: the fact that they were archaic things- rifles with wooden stocks and pistols without any sort of rails or accessories- , and the fact that their uniforms were all, well, uniform with literally no difference between each man.

That meant that none of these men were huntsmen, and their battle dress looked nothing like Atlesian, Valic, Mistrali, Vacuan, or even Menagerie's military. They had to be some sort of civilian group.

That begged the question: what exactly were they doing?

Furthermore, where exactly in Remnant _was_ Ruby Rose now, anyway?

Ruby met the eyes of one of the men, who stared with incredulity back at her. Then a whistle screamed out from somewhere she couldn't see and their boat's ramp started lowering with a series of clicks.

Then, the air around her erupted into gunfire and explosions and screaming, and the man's chest exploded into a shower of bloody, meaty chunks and splashes of blood, some of which even splashed onto her face.

Ruby Rose, Huntress prodigy and weapons extraordinaire, did the only thing she could think of at that second.

She screamed in pure, abject horror.

* * *

Every single one of Captain Raymond Barker's muscles were tensed as much as they could be, prepared for the battle ahead.

Well, any conceivable battle he could face, anyway. No one ever truly prepared for the death and destruction and pain of war and conflict. Everyone just coped as best they could.

And Barker found his coping mechanism in his flask, filled with the best whiskey he could find at any given point.

But now, he couldn't give himself the ease of a bottle. He had a job to do. These men needed a leader, and by God they would get one.

Or at least they would get Captain Barker.

The grizzled 32-year-old wasn't quite jolted from his thoughts by the gunfire and explosions and screams around him. Instead, his mind was ripped back to reality through his ears receiving a sound that was utterly impossible here, of all places.

A girl's scream.

Barker whipped his head around frantically for the source. There, in the back of the Higgins landing boat, cowered a teenage-looking young girl with a definitely out of place black and red corset and dress, complete with a frilly and large skirt and a rose red cape. On her back was some weird-looking boxy thing that bore colors that matched her outfit.

A civilian, for sure. And a strange one at that. But strange or no, Barker had a duty to fulfill: keep everyone under his watch safe, be they the highest officer or the lowest private in the Army. And this girl came under his watch the moment she'd stowed away in his boat.

Barker twisted around and made his way to the back of the landing craft, shoving the other soldiers of the 29th Infantry Division out of the way and out of the boat, as well as snatching up the late PFC Greene's helmet and rifle and ammo packs. When he finally reached the whimpering girl, he slapped the helmet onto her head and thrust the spare rifle and ammo into her arms. The action made her let out a startled yelp, and she looked into his blue eyes with surprise.

"C'mon! C'mon!" he commanded, "Move your pretty little ass! Go! Go or you'll die!" He started shoving the girl out of the craft, and after a couple of seconds, she got the hint and started stumbling out of the boat.

Barker and the girl splashed into grimy water, forcing the two of them to swim and wade through it until they hit the beach. A sight straight out of a psychopath's mind stretched beyond them, spread out over the sands of Normandy.

Big, ugly, gnarled hunks of steel that served only to block tanks shared space with the water and sand. Farther up ahead, past some seawalls and barbed wire, were clearings completely free of cover and bare to everything except for mines, obstacles, and sand.

And past that, on the cliffs of the beach, protruded pillboxes where Hitler's very own Nazi troops opened devastating firepower onto the invading force, and therefore Barker's comrades.

He turned to the girl. "Can you use a rifle, kid?!" he shouted to be heard over the sounds of fighting. She nodded, tears in her eyes. "Good! Stay low, stay in cover, and we'll get through this! Everything's gonna be all right!" She nodded again, slightly stronger this time.

The two of them moved up, surrounded by their comrades, who gawked and stared at the unusual appearance of a girl on a battlefield, but they sure as hell didn't have much time to do so, as they were being cut down by MGs by the dozen. And so, they crawled through the sand, making the most out of what little cover they had. Barker took as many potshots at the Krauts as he could, quickly slamming fresh magazines of .45 into his trusty M1A1 every time it ran dry. So did the rest of the men around them with their weapons. The Captain took notice that the girl wasn't nearly as trigger-happy as the rest of them, but chalked it up to timidness.

All around them, men lay dying and screaming for help. Barker felt something cold settle into his stomach as he made the mistake of whipping his head around at the sound of a particular call for help and saw a Private with his legs rendered to bloody chunks and his guts spilling out through his fingers. He looked away and tried to keep the dead and dying from his mind as he and the girl pushed forward up to the seawall.

* * *

A nearby explosion ripped the breath from Ruby's lungs and the huntress-in-training frantically cleared her eyes of debris and sand kicked up by the blast as she tailed the man who had dragged her from the boats. Looking back at them, she noted how the thin metal and wooden, splintering walls had been thorougly torn apart with the force of the many, many bullets being sent their way. Ruby was far from confident that her Aura could stand up to so many rounds and silently gave thanks for the man who had pulled her out of the vehicle.

The man who had saved her life.

Ruby gritted her teeth and continued crawling for all that she was worth. Her mind raced with possibilities as to finding cover, routes, and ways to avoid being shot at quite so much.

One of the only two things not running through her mind was the fact that there was just so _much_ ground to cover. If she had to guess, she'd say that the distance from the boats to the cliffs spanned a good 800-to-900 yards of sheer length. Ruby was sure that she would have a mental breakdown just thinking about how much farther they'd have to travel.

The other thing was the cacophony of death surrounding her. Again, she was sure that she would just shut down at the sights and sounds of so many people just... lying lifelessly and dying helplessly. Currently, she was blocking out the sight of a man lurching on his side, having been blown away and ripped apart by machine gun fire, his clothes covered in... red and his... inner parts flopping uselessly on the sands as he called out for...

Ruby scrunched her eyes shut and grit her teeth. No. No no no no no no. NO! This shouldn't be happening. This _can't_ be happening! She was a huntress! A champion and defender of the people! If she was going to do anything to stop this madness, she'd have to get to those cliffs as soon as she could, or more and more men would... cease to be.

As she crawled on, the seconds turned to agonizing minutes turned to torturous hours until _finally_ , she and the man who had saved her life had reached the seawall and proceeded to huddle behind it, waiting for an opportunity to breach the shelf leading to the cliffs.

* * *

A line of men, miraculously uninjured, stretched across the seawall, fervently pushing their bodies against its limited cover. Barker and the girl joined them, following suit.

Giving her a once-over, he was surprised to find that she didn't look like she even had a scratch on her. He figured that she would have gotten shot at at least once, given the garish colors of her outfit, but evidently she made it to the seawall with little more than rips and tears and scratches and bruises.

 _Lucky you_ , Barker thought bitterly, thinking back to the men who had started today nervous and tired, but alive, and who now were on Death's doorstep, if not already having supper with the family.

"Who the hell's she?!" demanded a soldier somewhere to Barker's left.

"Doesn't matter!" he responded, shutting him up. "What's the holdup?!"

"We managed to clear the obstacles for the tanks," cried out a helpful voice, "But now we gotta get through all this shit!"

All of a sudden, a wave of new faces threw themselves at the seawall, having just gotten off of some new landing craft.

Reinforcements. Just what the doctor ordered.

A few of those men ran up, toting long metal tubes. After a minute of preparation, several shouts of "FIRE IN THE HOLE!" were heard, and the explosives in the tubes were activated in a series of deafening, reverberating _BOOM_ s.

"Move up! Move up!" came the shout of a fellow captain, and as one, the men of the 29th Infantry Division did so, moving their way into the renewed chaos, debris, and cover caused by the detonations.

Men to their left and right fired at the enemy in front of them, neither willing to give an inch for several minutes until something in the Germans' defenses just _slipped_ and the 29th charged through the German lines, forcing the remaining enemy to fall back into secondary positions.

Barker was followed by the girl and eventually they made it to the cliffs, though a lot of good men didn't make it as well as they did. Eventually, the immediate group was reduced to seven, yet they made it to a pillbox, where one of the troops, wielding a flamethrower, cleared the nest with a jet of angry flame, causing two bodies to come tumbling, screaming, out of the opening and off of the cliffs of the beach.

Barker was in the process of moving up, his legs pumping furiously in an effort to avoid death, when he stumbled and fell into a trench and became half-submerged in a pool of filthy brown water.

And standing above him was a Kraut, his rifle poised high to strike with its bayonet and a snarl on his face as he went for the killing blow.

* * *

It just happened so fast...

One minute Ruby's only familiar face was sprinting across the muddy ground and running to a crater in the dirt that would have served as cover when he tripped and plummetted into a trench of some sort. She could hear him let out a groan of pain as he fell, and with a burst of her Semblance, she made her way to her friend's position in a speed that no ordinary human could achieve.

Of course, Ruby Rose was no _ordinary_ human.

Her silver eyes grew to the size of dinner plates when she saw her friend lying on the ground, staring with wide, blue eyes and a snarl at an unfamiliar man, who wore an unfamiliar uniform and had raised a rifle, fitted with a bayonet knife at the barrel, clearly intending on ending her new friend's life.

Without thinking, Ruby threw down the rifle the man had given her into the mud, drew her beloved Crescent Rose from the small of her back, transformed it into the full profile of her iconic scythe, fired a round behind her to propel herself, and... _bisected_ the would-be killer in two with another round to power her swing.

* * *

 _POOM! POOM!_

And suddenly, the Kraut was standing above him no more. The enemy soldier simply _fell in two_ and lay twitching in the mud as his dead body steamed in the cool air and his blood pooled underneath the halves.

Barker skittered away until his back hit the wooden walls of the trench, breathing hard from the adrenaline rush of the close encounter. He looked up and locked eyes with the girl who he had just met and who had just saved his life.

However, gone was the look of terror and surprise from her silver orbs. _That_ was replaced with a look of grim determination and... worry? The girl stowed something away on her back, too quickly for Barker to see exactly what it was, and retrieved Greene's rifle from the mud where it had, evidently, fallen.

"C'mon," she spoke softly, yet her high-pitched voice carried even through the cacophonous noise of the battle happening outside the trench. "C'mon," she repeated, "Let's go. We've gotta get out of here if we want to live, right?"

She extended her hand to Barker, who looked at it for a second before gratefully taking it and using it to get back to his feet. Barker retrieved his fallen Thompson and the two of them nodded at each other before climbing out of the German trench.

* * *

Well, that sliver of Hell was finally cleared. Reinforcements finally arrived in the nick of time and Omaha Beach had finally been secured for the Americans. Huzzah.

Now, once the remaining Germans had either surrendered or had been gunned down trying to surrender, the only gunfire that rang out in the area was the occasional sniper shot. Otherwise, it was finally peaceful. The soldiers now huddled deep within captured trenches, trying to reacquaint themselves with their own comrades and awaiting orders.

Captain Raymond Barker found himself in an entirely unique situation compared to the rest of the men that had survived the invasion of Omaha. He sincerely doubted that anyone else there had found himself caring for a girl currently having a mental breakdown.

The girl, whose black hair that ended in reddened tips and pale face drew more than a few stares and raised eyebrows, wept quite loudly and passionately, if Barker had anything to say about it.

He offered the poor girl as much comfort as he could, giving her a shoulder to cry on, but little else. Finally, after an eternity, the wails died down to mere sobs, and Barker let out a sigh of relief. They sat there for a little while longer before she finally mumbled something.

"Hmm?" Barker asked.

"I said thank you," the girl repeated, louder this time.

"For what?" the Captain grumbled.

"I don't know," she said. "But you _did_ help me get through all this. I doubt even my Aura could have let me survive through all of that."

Aura? Barker filed the term away for later, when the girl was sure not to be in such a... volatile mood. Instead of pressing for information, he just grunted and nodded an affirmative.

"You know, I didn't get your name," he said instead.

"Um, it's Ruby. Ruby Rose."

"I'm Barker," Barker supplied, brushing a few strands of hair out of Ruby's eyes. "Listen. Whoever you are, we're gonna get you out of this. All of this... This fighting, this agony... I promise you, we'll get through it. I personally promise that you'll get to see your mom and pop again. Everything's gonna be all right."

Somehow, these words only served to make the girl cry more. Whether those were tears of despair or joy, Barker was far from qualified to know. He just looked down at his boots and sighed.

Oh, this was gonna be a long war, wasn't it?

* * *

 **AN: Hello again! Life is still trying to kick my ass, who regardless of that I managed to finish this concept for a story. Like I said, if you like what's happening here, I might just turn this into a real story. To show your support, put reviews on this story and I'll be able to gauge your reactions. If I have any historical errors, chew me out for them, please.**

 **Beta read by: CrazyQuilava**

 **Remember to Read, Review, Favorite, and Follow. Have a nice day!**

 **-AnonymousInsomnia**


	2. Normandy

**July 12, 2017 -**

 **Hello all! I'm not dead! And probably about to get sacked for a lack of activity!**

 **YAY!**

 **Okay, but seriously. I've been SUPER busy with school and Karate and shit like that for, well, months since I last even _touched_ a word processor, and it's been super rough trying to write right now. Here's something I was working on for a while. I will probably end up with little this summer for me to publish, but fear not! I have more plot bunnies than the appropriate metaphorical allegory here, and I want to first get done with a chapter of _Cat's Eye_ (No, I did _not_ abandon it) and eventually I want to do something that involves shell-shocked newly-returning Vietnam veterans (only the most innocent and cheerful of all protagonists in this corner of the website). **

**Edit: Fixed some terminology.**

* * *

June 7, 1944, Normandy, France.

Captain Barker marched along the muddy path to the command tent, his boots squelching as he took step after purposeful step to his destination. The captain appeared irritable and grouchy on the outside, but internally, he was deep in thought. It would be just a matter of a few days until they would have to move out again, cutting through the heart of German-occupied territory on their way to blaze a path to Berlin, with the rest of the Allied force.

For now, the beachhead was secure, but Omaha as a whole was far from being Allied-controlled. It was definitely getting there, but it would probably be at least a few days until the troops stationed there, including his own in the 29th, would have the beaches secure. Then the higher-ups would have to ship across supplies, armor, and men in order to support a push into the mainland.

Barker didn't think that his men would have to move out again so soon after being in the chaos that was Omaha, and he hoped that they'd all get a chance to recover and let the fresh reinforcements deal with the shit they'd all gotten themselves into, but you never knew with the Army. Yeah, he'd read _All Quiet on the Western Front_ , and while he knew that the German Army of the Great War and his own were similar like a plane was the same as a car, he couldn't help but still be cynical over the decisions of those who would decide his fate for him.

But his troops' reassignment wasn't the only thing putting Barker ill at ease that day. The girl that he'd found somehow stowed away in the landing craft yesterday was still sticking around. She seemed to have no idea what was going on, which was quite unbelievable, to be honest. How could she not have at least gotten word-of-mouth about Pearl Harbor or Poland? How in the hell did she even manage to sneak onto a landing craft for the invasion in the first place if she didn't even have a clue where she was?

Figuring that she was maybe from England, Barker procured a map of the country, after some prodding from a tired-looking corporal, and told her to point out where she lived, so that his bosses could take her back without much trouble on his part. The thing that made his brow raise in confusion was her admission that the map was utterly unfamiliar to her, and she requested a world map to see which continent she was on. Barker thought she might be screwing with her at that point, but decided to humor her, if nothing else than to get her to calm down.

The real surprise came when she claimed not to recognize anything from that map, too. What in the hell that meant, he didn't know. But he _did_ know that meant that she had nowhere to go if they decided to ship her off to England or back to the States.

Barker was always one for taking life one step at a time. For now, he pushed the thoughts of the curious Ruby Rose out of his head, took a quick swig of whiskey from his hip flask, and strode into the command tent, intent on getting his briefings out of the way before anything else.

* * *

On a good day, Ruby Rose, huntress-in-training of 15, was usually the most dangerous person in the room. Even if she wasn't exactly the most adept at social interaction, she was inwardly at least confident in her ability to take care of herself. Between her experiences, her Uncle Qrow's combat training, and her early enrollment at the prestigious Beacon Academy for huntsmen, she wasn't one to be trifled with.

However, the revelations of the previous day and this one left her shaken to her very core. Yesterday's battle showed the young huntress just exactly what it was like to be surrounded by so much death, and this morning's conversation with Barker convinced her that, through some sort of insane means, she had wound up in a completely unknown and foreign world, with its own cultures, histories, and conflicts. The maps that he had shown her were completely unrecognizable, and though she hated to admit it, because, frankly, they'd be completely unreasonable if she said any of them out loud, she couldn't deny that her observations were correct: she was in a completely new world.

Barker had then gone off on his own, muttering something about orders. He'd told her to stay put where she was - that is, in a muddy trench, sitting next to an ammunition crate - and that he'd figure things out when he got back. That left Ruby Rose by herself, with nothing on her save for the grimy, dirty clothes on her back, the old-fashioned rifle Barker gave to her the previous day, whatever ammunition she had on her belt and in her magazine pouch, and her weapon.

Her weapon! Letting out a gasp of excitement and realization, Ruby pulled her beloved Crescent Rose sniper-scythe from its place at the small of her back and examined it. Ruby's beloved signature weapon was in dire need of some maintenance, she observed. The rifle's body was absolutely caked in mud and sand, and the huntress knew that her tool of trade would need some serious maintenance before she would go out again into whatever she'd somehow landed herself into.

She looked around for a cloth to spread out on something so that she could get to work, but found nothing, save for a faded old uniform that looked little better than rags at that point. Ruby grimaced when she realized what had to be done. Swallowing down her anxiety, she reached up to her neck, unclasped the pins holding on her signature cape, and spread her precious cape over the lid of the ammunition crate, resigning herself to the reality that it would soon be stained with gun oils and grease.

She then reached to her pack to retrieve her cleaning kit, then dejectedly remembered that she had left it back in Team RWBY's dorm room. But then she remembered that old military rifles usually carried cleaning kits in their stocks, and reached for the rifle Barker had left her with, quickly locating the buttplate and retrieving the rifle's cleaning kit from inside the wooden furniture.

With her weapon and the acquired cleaning kit, she set herself to work, carefully and smoothly unfolding Crescent Rose with a series of metallic _clanks_ and removed the scythe portion of it via carefully punching out a few pins, which let the blade come off of the barrel in two sections, which Ruby then dissassembled further. As for the rifle, Ruby separated Crescent Rose into its constituent parts- barrel, muzzle brake, bolt, receiver, trigger, and folding shaft stock.

Ruby was _very_ pleasantly surprised to find that the scope was completely fine, not cracked or dented or otherwise damaged in any way. She let out a sigh of relief, comfortable in knowing that the scope's zero was undamaged and that she wouldn't have to waste what little valuable ammunition she still had for her beloved weapon in trying to make it accurate once again.

As for the other parts, Ruby went about her normal business cleaning and oiling them as usual, only going the extra mile for the parts caked in mud and sand from the events before. Thankfully, she engineered her weapon so that its internal components and action would be sealed off from the elements in the event of this very situation from ever becoming a problem, so it was only the body she needed to wipe down and clean. It wasn't ideal, as the paint still ended up being obscured under a very thin layer of grime and mud in the end, but it would do.

Ruby was so engrossed in her task that she didn't even notice two men enter the trench she sat in. She only noticed them when one of them cleared his throat in order to get her attention, at which she snapped her head up, surprised.

"You lost, little lady?" the one who got her attention asked. He was a man not much older than herself, with dark, close-cropped hair and a mustache and holding a burning cigarette between his fingers, and he and his compatriot were clad in the same uniforms as Barker had been. The one who spoke hung his helmet at his hip and held a cheap-looking submachine gun in his hands, not quite pointed at her, but enough to make a point with his finger clearly on the gun's trigger.

Ruby shook her head in the negative and didn't try to stop the second man, who looked older than the first, was clean-shaven, and wore his own helmet in its rightful place atop his head, from reaching over and deftly swiping Ruby's borrowed rifle from where it leaned against the trench wall beside her. If he noticed the cleaning kit missing from the stock, he didn't say anything about it. He had another rifle just like it over his back on a sling.

The first man nodded his head, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. "Well," he said, "it really _does_ seem like you're lost. After all, I don't think that a place like this is really one for a girl like yourself, much less a kid like you. Why don't you come with us and we can get you outta here, what do you say?"

Ruby shook her head again, this time saying, "I-I was just waiting for, uh, Captain Barker to get his, um, orders! Orders, yeah... He said he'd figure out everything when he got back!" Ruby cringed internally at her stuttering. It was just a couple of guys, why was she so terrible at talking to new people?

The two men exchanged a glance, and Ruby could swear she saw a silent conversation pass between the two of them. Then the first man spoke up.

"Yeah, I dunno what the hell the Captain's doing, but you're not allowed to be here. You'll have to come with us."

"I'm not about to do that!" Ruby blurted out, "This is the best chance I have at figuring out what's going on!"

She half-regretting opening her mouth that time, because it seemed that that startled the men into action. The first man trained his submachine gun on her and the second tensed up, as if about to pounce like a tiger.

"I ain't saying it one more time," growled the first man, his nonchalance and cool demeanor wiped away like a blown-out candle's flame, "You're coming with us, whether you like it or not!"

The three of them were frozen for what felt like hours, locked in an intense standoff, before finally, thankfully, they were interrupted by a deep, irritated, and, most of all, familiar, voice.

"Sergeant Smith! Sergeant Preston! What in the actual _shit_ is going on here?!"

Ruby whipped her head over to face the source of the voice, idly noting that both of the now-named sergeants were doing much the same.

Captain Barker stood like a sullen scarecrow, his frame hunched over in what appeared to be exhaustion and frustration, and his glare was like a laser focused in on Sergeants Smith and Preston, who wilted under the superior officer's gaze. His unkempt hair managed to look even _more_ frazzled than it had that morning. He held a bundle of clothes and a helmet underneath an armpit.

"Oh, uh, sir!" the first man, the relatively talkative one, Smith, said, "We found this little girl here- "

"Hey!" Ruby exclaimed, but she was ignored.

"- who _obviously_ should not be inside this military zone, being a civilian and all," Smith continued as if nothing happened, "and wanted to escort her somewhere where she would be exponentially less likely to catch a stray sniper's bullet, for example."

"That will not be necessary, sergeant," Barker replied. "She's with me. We have many things to discuss, and I would like it if I was at least within speaking distance of her to do so and _not_ under some sort of military custody, _sergeant_."

Smith shut up, straightened up, and saluted crisply.

"Don't do nothin' bad, sir," Sergeant Preston said, uttering the first words Ruby had heard usher from his mouth.

"Get your mind out of the gutter, Preston. You know I'm not that kind of man."

The two sergeants then left the trench, leaving Ruby's rifle in Barker's hands, and went on their way after Barker ordered them to keep quiet about Ruby's presence in the camp.

Ruby found herself breathing a sigh of relief, but it was soon quashed when Barker fixed her with a glare and gave her disassembled weapon a pointed look.

"Pack that shit up before someone sees," he growled, "We're already attracting enough attention as it is."

Sheepishly, Ruby obeyed, deftly reassembling her beloved signature weapon with well-practiced motions until what was once a pile of assorted rifle components, blade pieces, and bits of painted metal was once more a fully-functional and beautifully deadly sniper-scythe, albeit still a bit dirty. With the flick of a hidden switch, she compacted the weapon down to its much more manageable compact form, and hung her tool of trade on the harness at the small of her back.

Once she was done, Barker waved her over to a more secluded part of the trench, away from prying eyes, and said, "You should probably come up with somewhere we can put you, kid, because you sure as hell do _not_ want to be around guys like us for the time being."

Now Ruby found herself confused. "What do you mean?" she asked, cocking her head to the side, innocently.

Barker sighed. "You really don't know?" Ruby shook her head in the negative. "Fine. It all started over forty years ago, with the Great War. 'The War to End Wars', they called it. A whole lot of good that did. Some people got pissed off that the war didn't go their way or that they got shit on by the way it ended, and it left one country _especially_ pissed off. About a decade ago, this guy - this bastard, actually - a guy named Adolf Hitler, came to power and began building an army to take over the world, even though that shit wasn't allowed. He invaded his neighbors and eventually we - the United States Army - got involved. You see what's happening?"

"Wait, you're military?"

"What, was it not fucking obvious looking at our weapons and uniforms?"

"Well, it's just that where I come from, the militaries are very, uh, different, to say the least. I thought you guys were maybe a militia or even civilians, since you don't wear armor and your weapons look so dated."

"Wow, kid, that thing about the weapons? That hurts, kid. It really does," Barker said, feigning clutching at his aching heart, "And armor? What do you think this is, the Middle Ages? Any armor that the average Joe can actually walk around in won't stop a bullet, that's for damn sure. Look, my point is, we're at war here, and war's not anywhere I'd want a kid like you to hang around."

"But I have to!" Ruby was indignant. "I've trained my whole _life_ to help people! I can't just stay on the sidelines while people get hurt and die without doing anything about it! Besides, I still need to find a way back home, and you know exactly what I mean when I say that! Whatever thing that brought me here can send me back, and failing that I can try to find my friends wherever they've ended up!"

Barker sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Yep, I figured this would happen." He looked at her straight in her strange, silver eyes - the color gave him but an instant of pause - , and said, "You've got that look in your eyes, kid. A look I see in the recruits back in basic back home. The look that says that they've joined up to make the world a better place, and nothing short of life-destroying combat's going to change any of that for them. I dunno. Maybe _you_ will actually be able to change something, but right now I can tell that you're not gonna leave us be whether we like it or not."

He tossed her the bundle of clothes he'd been carrying. "Here. It's an extra uniform, pretty big, too." A beaded necklace with a pair of gleaming metal tags hanging off of it joined the uniform in Ruby's arms. "Also snagged that from one of the unlucky bastards that didn't make it to the cliffs yesterday. Shitty move, I know. But I knew that it was the only chance we had of you actually being able to come with us. Change into them, assume your new identity, and hope to hell that everything turns out fine."

Barker planted the helmet he'd been carrying onto Ruby's head and stalked off, giving the teenage huntress-in-training some privacy to change, but not before yelling out, "And for God's sake, make sure you actually sound like a man! Jesus, you sound like a goddamn whistle!"

Ruby stared at the tags, seeing the name punched into the metal. Stanton, David H. The name she'd have to assume going forward if she stood any chance of seeing Remnant again. Try as she might, she just couldn't stop thinking about the dead man whose name she'd be effectively stealing from him. Was he that one whose guts were leaking out through his fingers, desperately calling for a medic? Was he the man whose legs were blown off and was left just quietly sobbing and praying for a painless death?

In the end, Ruby knew that there was absolutely nothing she could do about that, and so she changed into her new uniform - a white undershirt and a set of mottled-green fatigues - , tucked Stanton's identification tags under her new fatigue shirt, and put on her steel bucket helmet, taking care to do up her hair underneath so it wouldn't poke out from under the one piece of armor these soldiers were issued.

She noticed that Barker had also given her a rucksack of sorts to put her belongings inside. It had supplies within its folds, including spare ammunition clips for her wood-furniture rifle, an entrenching tool, and most surprisingly, a pistol and several full magazines. Ruby folded up her uniform, and threw it in, but not before removing a few choice items from her usual getup. Her bandolier belt, with its spare magazine pouch for Crescent Rose went on her hips, though she removed her trademark burning rose emblem from it, and her harness for stowing Crescent Rose away when not in use went back on her body as well.

Her signature scythe would have to remain inconspicuous, however, so she carefully wrapped her weapon up in a spare, worn-out cloth, and stowed it away at the small of her back.

Her kit and gear ready to go, she scooped up her other rifle and quickly familiarized herself with its design and operation. It was of the, bit dated, but still usable, rotating bolt, which indicated a gas system. It appeared to feed from small 8-round clips instead of a more conventional magazine, which was odd. It would force the wielder to dump their weapon's ammunition just to reload in the heat of combat. Otherwise, it would eject them using a switch on the side, Ruby noted, with a distinct metallic _ping_ sound. The safety was a switch just ahead of the trigger, which she engaged after loading in a clip and letting the rifle strip a round into its chamber, mindful not to let it catch her thumb while doing so. It was a heavy thing, long too, but not too unlike some of the more old-fashioned huntsman weapons she'd seen in her day.

She did the same with the pistol. It was a slim weapon, yet heavy, being obviously made of high-quality steel. It had an external hammer and an exposed firing pin, which was quite the departure from the typical striker-fired or electronically actuated pistols she'd seen in the hands of police officers in Vale. The trigger was single-action, so she'd have to carry the gun cocked if it was to be useful as an emergency weapon. It fed from single-stack magazines instead of double-stack, or even helical, meaning that it had a pitiful capacity of only 7 rounds per magazine. Thankfully, the bullets were big, fat things, and she had no doubt that it could feasably punch a hole through most things that needed to be shot dead. The sights were terrible, though. Ruby found a safety in the grip of the weapon, ensuring a proper hold on the pistol to fire, and a thumb-actuated safety on the side. That one she clicked on after loading the pistol and chambering a round, then Ruby thrust it into a leather holster hanging from the front of her new uniform.

Ruby found Barker just outside the trench, on the ground level above the walls of the dug-out fortification. The older man was puffing on a dimly-lit cigarette which he held clenched between his fingers. He threw it to the ground and stamped on it with a boot as Ruby sidled up to him.

Barker gave her a once-over, before both grimacing and nodding at her. "You look decent enough, I suppose. I've seen recruits come off the buses with that build. Some of them don't shake it off, so you could probably pass as a young private, fresh off the boats, so long as you either disguise that shrill voice of yours or keep your mouth shut."

Ruby just frowned and nodded, but she still felt uncertain about all of this. However, before she could voice her concerns about the whole situation, she felt her guts twist and her stomach roared its fury at not being placated in so long. Ruby's face turned the shade of her namesake as she remembered that she hadn't, in fact, eaten anything all day or the day before, being a bit too busy getting caught up in _not dying_.

Barker coughed out a laugh. "Looks like we're going to have to test out your little 'disguise' quite soon, then. C'mon, the mess guys'll have something set up by now. Let's get some food in ya before you go and die on me."

* * *

Ruby followed Barker along to the mess, as Barker called it, where they would get their rations. They'd been traveling there in silence, avoiding conversation and interaction with the other uniformed Army men scattered around the camp as best they could, until they neared their destination. There weren't that many soldiers around, surprisingly, and no one seemed to pay attention to the pair, so Ruby asked Barker a question that had been nagging on her mind.

"Barker," Ruby whispered, "How'd you even get all this stuff for me, anyway?"

"Quartermaster owes me a hell of a lot of favors," Barker replied without missing a beat, "Cashed them in like a check and we were good to go, no questions asked."

"Oh."

The mess wasn't much to look at at all. It was just a wooden table and some benches holding up some pots filled with some sort of food, which was giving off an indescribably alluring scent to the starving young huntress named Ruby Rose. Whereas the room just smelled of mud, sadness, and a strange mixture of body odor and solvent, the food gave off something home-y and inviting, a metaphorical lighthouse of hope in the midst of a sea of _not-food_. Barker said they were B-rations, but she couldn't really care less about what he was saying, since hot food was _right there_ and she just had to figure out a place to put it so that she could _inhale_ the stuff.

Luckily, Barker came to her rescue, reaching into her gear and withdrawing an aluminum mess kit, which he opened up and poured some of that tantalizingly hot food onto before doing the same with his own and moving over to a nearby table. Ruby followed as if in a trance until Barker handed her an aluminum fork, spoon, and knife with which the young huntress-in-training, disguised as a soldier, used to wolf down her food with gusto.

Ruby didn't note anything about the food in terms of... well, anything, really. It was food and Ruby was hungry, plain and simple, so she didn't complain at all when she finished hers off, went back for seconds, then thirds, and finally came to a slow halt when the fourths disappeared and Ruby's stomach finally had a semblance of satiation to it once again. She sighed in contentment and slumped onto the table, resting her head on its oaken surface.

"Damn, this guy packs it away! Where's it all go?" came a gruff, if friendly, voice accompanied by its owner, a brown-haired man with friendly, wisened blue eyes, plunking himself down at their table, his own meal in hand. "Donnelly's the name," he said, extending his hand toward Barker, who returned it in kind, ("Barker") and Ruby, who shook it with _probably_ too much force, if the grimace on Donnelly's face was to be believed.

"Uh," Ruby said before catching herself. "Um," she began, pitching her voice a few octaves lower with some difficulty, "my name's... uh," she wracked her brain for the name on the ID tags, "Stanton! David Stanton." _Nailed it._

"Well, now, nice to meet ya," Donelly replied. "Ya know, ya gotta pretty young-lookin' face there. Sure gotta lotta hearts to break when we get to town, y'know?"

Ruby blushed furiously at that comment, but nodded wordlessly. Apparently, that was the right thing to do, because Barker gave her a barely-noticeable nod at that. Thankfully, the friendly man was hooked into conversation with Barker, diverting his attention from the huntress-in-hiding.

* * *

Barker had said that his next job was to put together his company, but given the casualties from the day before, he figured that it would be a useless endeavor for the first couple of days. Instead, he just let the soldiers (whether or not they were his) gather themselves up as best they could and recuperate. The men intermingled, if they tried to socialize at all, regardless of rank, and everyone seemed to be lost in a haze, their eyes unfocused and their speech heavy, as if the words they wanted to say were precious gold that they wouldn't waste.

Ruby stuck around Barker for the better part of a week, keeping mostly to herself while the older man was content to keep discussion to small talk, save for some questions relating to her circumstances. She watched as the men gradually began to pick themselves up and out of their stupor, the heavy melancholy in their eyes tempering into a cold determination, resolute in fulfilling their duty as soldiers in this world of war. While they organized themselves into platoons within their respective companies, Ruby stayed close to Barker's side, not really knowing where else to go.

Finally, the time came when some semblance of organization grew out of the chaos. Out of the company, which apparently at full strength would have numbered an easy 200-or-so men, only about 100 men remained, leaving the unit at four platoons strong. The fighting that had dwindled it had been unsurprisingly, in Ruby's eyes, intense, and the loss in manpower completely understandable.

Barker, as a captain, would apparently have commanded the entire company, but many officers gave their lives to the beaches, leaving the command chain with holes in it. Soldiers who were next in line were promoted to lead, or higher officers would, in Barker's case, be forced to take command of a smaller group of men. Therefore, Barker became the commanding officer of 18th Infantry, 1st Battalion, Company C, Rifleman Platoon.

Oh, he grumbled a bit about it, but Ruby could tell that it didn't really affect him that much. _What_ he did didn't really matter, the question was _if_ he did anything, and he would have to lead his men as best he could, regardless of the number under his command.

* * *

June 12, 1944, Normandy, France.

This was it. The Ruby Disguise Mk. 1's maiden run. Time to tell if she would be able to stay undetected in the middle of this damnable war in the midst of all these American soldiers.

She swallowed down the lump in her throat. Throughout the past week, she'd been sticking close to Captain Barker under the cover of an assistant from the reinforcements sent back over the English Channel, and now it was time to intermingle with the rest of the platoon, or risk coming under suspicion by the rest of the men. Especially so, since Barker informed her that the company had trained together and had grown somewhat close as a result. A new face like hers, appearing without explanation, would be highly suspect.

So Barker let her go on her way while he went to sort out the platoon's next move with his colleague officers. Ruby found her way to a relatively secluded spot in the platoon's designated area and started inspecting her rifle and pistol, finding little else to do, and let her mind wander. She was sure that anyone who was wondering about her presence would stop to talk to her, while the _vast_ majority of the rest wouldn't really care anyway and would leave her to her own devices.

Eventually, though, she knew someone would come by. Someone always did, as she had learned from her first days at Beacon Academy.

"Hey, kid, give it a rest! I think if your weapons were going to fall apart, they'd do it already!"

Ruby looked up at the owner of the voice, then froze as she recognized the face of the man staring right back at her.

Sergeant Smith's dark grey eyes grew to the size of saucers as recognition dawned on his features. He opened his mouth to say something, but Ruby quickly reached out and clamped her hands over it before he could ruin... well, everything.

"If you want to talk, let's go someplace a little more..." Ruby looked around, spotting an opening between a couple of parked, unmoving, and vacant tanks, "private."

* * *

Ruby didn't know why Sergeant Smith didn't just blab about her the instant her hands let go of his mouth, but after rubbing his jaw with a grimace and shooting her a glare, he followed her to the tanks.

"Okay, why the hell are you still here?" he barked when they were safely out of sight and earshot.

Ruby frowned, sighed, and shook her head. "And here I thought that my disguise would at least survive _one_ person, anyway."

Sergeant Smith smirked and said, "Kid, if there's one thing you should know about being in the military, it's that no plan survives the enemy. Furthermore, _why the hell are you trying to be in the military_?"

Ruby grimaced at his tone, but replied, "Look, the short version is that I don't have anywhere to go, and that this is the best way I can get back home."

"The best way, or just Captain Barker's way?"

"Well..." Ruby trailed off.

Smith sighed. "Look, I got a little brother back home. Little guy always just _has_ to prove himself to his friends, to our folks, to the extended family- you get the point."

"But I'm not trying to prove anything!"

"Whatever you're trying to do, I just want to know if I can trust you not to get us all killed."

"I may not look it, but I'm a trained warrior! I can look after myself!"

Smith sighed. "Goddamned Captain..." he muttered to himself. "Well, I've known Barker for a long time, back in training, and if there's _one_ thing I know about him, it's that he thinks things through. If you are what you say you are and he believes you, I guess that's good enough for me. I'll keep this between him, us, and Press, and we'll just have to see how badly this all falls apart."

Sergeant Smith turned to leave and rejoin the other men, but not before calling over his shoulder, "We'll get our orders soon, so I just hope that we all get to go back home on ships instead of boxes. I'll be keeping an eye on you."

"Oh, and one last thing: Barker gave the platoon a name. Welcome to Huntsman Platoon, kid."

* * *

 **A/N: Holy shit why am I still alive?**

 **Okay, this chapter is quite bigger than what I'm used to and probably you guys too. However, I hope it's worth it, because it's probably going to be the only one for a while. Things will start getting underway in this story in the following chapters, and if you're wondering why Ruby isn't losing her shit, well never fear, shell-shock-induced mental breakdowns are here!**

 **Beta read by CrazyQuilava as always.**

 **Don't forget to Read, Review, Favorite, and Follow.**

 **Peace!**

 **-AnonymousInsomnia**


	3. Saint-Lô - Part 1

**January 6, 2018**

 **So, uh, Happy New Year's, right?**

 **Now, hold on. Before you start a riot about my disappearance, suffice it to say that I was busy for a very long time late last year, and I couldn't write. Also, FFNet kinda screwed me over earlier last night, not allowing me to post this chapter to the Doc Manager. Strange, I know. I will have a full explanation in the A/N at the bottom, so for now, onto the show!**

 **I am not affiliated with Roosterteeth. I do not own RWBY, and I do not own human history. This work is a not-for-profit bit of fun I do in my spare time.**

* * *

June 15, 1944, Normandy, France

"Uggghhhh... This sucks..."

"Quit 'yer whinin' kiddo. We've only got like a dozen more miles to go."

Ruby groaned and shifted her rucksack, desperate for any feeling of relief in her aching, burning, knotted shoulders. Her uniform, once upon a time clean-pressed and crisp, was now drenched with her sweat and grime from the dirt road the 29th traveled upon.

She and Baker marched in formation at the head of the platoon, the old soldier nursing a burning cigarette. The young former huntress-in-training was surrounded by wholly unfamiliar sights and sounds. Never before had the girl marched in formation; not with so many people, never with soldiers. Her ears were filled with the staccato of boots pounding dirt flat beneath them. That was about the only familiar thing she heard. That steady beat was accompanied by a crescendo of rumbling vehicle motors and the occasional, extremely long-range report of an engagement too far away to affect them.

Huntsman Platoon, along with the rest of the troops in the 29th, had been on the move for a few days now, and fatigue had started to set in. The soldiers' ribbing of each other and their general banter was starting to slow down. Sure, it was still there, but it was like a sniper's bullet beginning its deceleration after flying through the air; a minute difference, but a sign of an eventual halt.

Ruby slung her rifle over her shoulder and wrestled her canteen off of her belt. She forcibly yanked the cap off of the little container and greedily drank from the canteen... for all of about a second before her tongue hit air, the canteen finally having run dry. She sighed. It was her third canteen so far, and she only had one remaining in her rucksack. The previous nights' camp having had next to no opportunities for the troops to refill on their invaluable water.

 _Wasn't there a thing about a dude in a desert who would give, like, a million Lien for some water?_ Ruby thought to herself, _Nah, that sounds stupid. I could use some water, though._

The food was miserably bland, the water nearly nonexistant, and the soldiers' muscles were unbearably taut. Still, somehow, morale remained high enough, almost as though the men were already used to this kind of treatment.

Ruby mentally slapped herself. Of course the other guys would be used to this! They probably went through some measure of torture in their basic training! She sighed as she realized that that really meant that she now had to redouble her efforts in camouflaging herself in front of the other guys. After all, some private who was unable to stomach basic marching conditions was bound to stand out, if only for some unwanted ribbing.

"Hey, Barker?" Ruby asked.

"Hmm?"

"We gonna get some more water soon?"

The captain tapped a finger to the side of his head, thinking for a minute before replying, "We'll cut through the Elle River on our way to this town, Saint-Lô. We can get some water from the river then."

"Saint-Lô?" Ruby repeated.

"Yeah," Barker said, taking a particularly deep drag off of his combusting tobacco. "Heavy German presence there, gotta clear it out. Moving across the river, then into the town."

Ruby nodded, acknowledging this new information. She cast her gaze over their surroundings. The men marched along a row of hedges lining a beaten-down dirt path, obscuring their entire right side. On the other laid a rolling expanse of peaceful grassland, the blades of which waved lazily in the breeze, oblivious as to the men tromping about them, off to and at war. In the distance - Ruby guessed at about 150-200 yards out - was a farmhouse.

At the head of the pack, Ruby and Barker moved along with not a single word passing between them until Ruby's ears picked up on the sound of someone picking up their pace to catch up to the two of them. Ruby turned around to see a man with a dark mustache in full battle gear approaching them, catching a glimpse of dark hair underneath his helmet and the grey sheet-metal submachinegun in his hands.

Sergeant Smith cast a sidelong glance at the huntress-in-disguise before requesting a cigarette from Barker, who almost lazily handed one over to the NCO.

"So," began Smith, "What's happening up here? Any idea on where we're going?"

"Same thing I told Private Stanton here," said Barker, taking another drag on the cigarette. Confusion passed within Ruby's mind for a brief instant - _focus Ruby, focus! -_ before she remembered that that was her cover name. "Cross the river, then into town. Expect a lot of shooting. Too many Krauts to be safe there."

Smith grunted in acknowledgement before someone, from the looks of him, a private, approached and grabbed his shoulder.

"Hey sarge, Davis and McMurray keep tryin' to hog the rations back there. Can you come an' give us a hand?"

"Yeah, sure, just-" was all Smith was able to get out...

As in that second, a distant _pow_ was heard, and a half second later, the young private's helmet let out a shrill _PING_ and the inside of his head suddenly got a lot more fresh air.

Bright crimson viscera mixed with blood and bloody bone shards jettisoned right out of the side of the young man's head, his face frozen in a blank expression as his body went limp, as if an invisible puppeteer had severed his strings. The rifle he carried clattered to the ground as he slumped and began to fall. Ruby even swore she could hear a voice somewhere whispering, " _Boom_! Headshot," as messed up as it was.

Ruby witnessed this happen in slow motion, her mind retreating back to that beach. The screams of long dead and dying men once again echoed in her ears, but their bloody and gored corpses weren't the images filling her mind. Instead, an instant replay of sorts flashed by, showing a young man in a different, darker uniform falling into two halves, his blood mixing in color with her Crescent Rose's paint. She felt sick. A sudden pain grew within her head, behind her eyes and her forehead, as she felt like she was going to throw up whatever little rations she had managed to swallow down on the march there.

Ruby was stuck within this hellish limbo for what felt to her like hours before a sudden ripping noise, punctuated by distant and not-so-distant staccatos filled the air. Her mind abruptly cleared as her training and instincts took over. Her semblance activated on pure reflex as she roughly grabbed and yanked Barker and Smith, tackling and shoving them into a ditch on the side of the road in a small flurry of her signature rose petals. The other men of the 29th took cover wherever they could, hiding behind their armored transports or in ditches or behind hedges. When the men could not find protection, they fired almost blindly in the enemy's direction, frantically raking the area with their vision as they sought some manner of cover.

About a good eighth of the men were ruthlessly cut down by enemy fire, left to either cool as corpses or to writhe in agony, left at either the enemy's mercy so as to end their suffering, or the precious few combat medics between the men who could _possibly_ apply first aid in cover.

"Fuck!"

"Get the _fuck_ down!"

"Shit, they're comin' outta those hedges over there!"

"Goddammit man, we're pinn-! Shit! Fuck, my leg!"

"Medic! We need a goddamn medic over here!"

"We got any fucking artillery out here?!"

"Keep some pressure on this shit! I'll give him morphine for the pain, now _shoot back_ , dammit!"

"Fuck! 's all sortsa fucked up out-!"

"Shit! Donny's gone! Fuck you, Jerry! Fuck! You!"

The air above the battlefield was rent with the sounds of not only weapons fire, but also combat chatter. There was another row of hedges about 50 yards in the distance, overlooking both the hedges the Americans flanked, and the stretch of land between them and the farmhouse in the distance.

"Goddammit, they got us pinned here!" Barker was able to snarl out, "The river's just past that farmhouse but we won't be able to advance with our shit getting hammered here! MG fire's just too concentrated!"

"Shit!" Smith cursed. "We got any snipers?! Rockets?! Anything?!"

Ruby glanced at her rifle. The sights were mere peep-style sights. No magnification present, but the targets weren't that far away. Back in Signal, Ruby's marksmanship was rated at one-inch groupings at 800 yards with Crescent Rose, the same size at 500 with the regular training rifles. She had no idea what the accuracy of her new rifle was like, but she figured that at this range, with this weapon, and with these sights, it might be a fair enough shot.

Ruby leapt up from her prone position on the ground, her semblance kicking into effect for good measure as she sighted in the weapon's tiny irons.

"Stanton?!"

"Ruby?!"

Ruby heard her technically - and not-so-technically - commanding officers cry out in shock before time seemed to slow as her speed kicked into full effect. It also seemed that Barker let his tongue slip in his speech, but that was the least of all their worries at that moment.

The Germans' muzzle flashes were fleetingly visible between the vegetation. It was, however, easy to see the difference between their rifles, which were slower, probably bolt-actions, and the machine guns and submachine guns. There were no less than a dozen bolt-actions out there, about a half dozen submachine guns, and a few machine guns blurting out rounds at a blistering pace.

Ruby raised her rifle to the first MG's flashes, squinted, and held her breath. Then her finger curled around her rifle's trigger until it tripped the sear inside the receiver. The amalgamation of steel and wood punched tightly against the pocket of her shoulder, and the machine gun stopped firing in the distance. The rifle's bolt kicked out a spent shell and stripped a fresh cartridge into the chamber. The huntress/soldier moved onto the next MG, then repeated the process. The other gun fell silent. Then, Ruby started picking off the submachine guns. A half dozen guns fell silent; perfect shots. " _Practice makes perfect_ ," her old professors at Signal Academy used to say. The rifle was now empty, so Ruby quickly shoved a fresh clip of ammunition into the rifle, snappily reloading it.

She was about to sight in another gun, but then a short shot of pain shot through her. Aura exhaustion via semblance overuse. She cursed herself for not paying attention. She cut her semblance off, then fell back into cover. Smith's and Barker's astonished faces were there to greet her as she gulped down air, her lungs suddenly starving.

"What the hell was that, kid?!"

"Never... Mind... Just took out... Those guns..."

"What?! Really?!" Smith looked incredulous, rightly so.

Ruby nodded, then reached into her pack for her last canteen, her throat newly parched.

"Think you can do that again?" Barker asked.

Ruby held up a finger as she gulped back a swig of water. After a second, she replied, "No can do. Tapped out for now. We'll have to get going, but since I took out those guns, we should be fine until their reinforcements arrive."

Barker nodded. "Got it, kid. I'll go pass it down the line." He got up and sprinted off, hollering, "MGs're down for the count! I want rifles keeping them in their shitholes while we advance!"

Plastered all over Smith's face was incredulity. His unlit cigarette flopped out of his open mouth as he rapidly blinked, as if to clear an invisible sand from his eyes.

"What... What the hell was that?" he asked. "With... With the petals, and the shooting, and the what the _fuck_?!"

"Hey, I told you I could handle myself," Ruby grinned. "So I did. Call it a trade secret, man."

Smith gnashed his teeth before visibly reeling himself back. "Dammit. I'll grill you about it later. We gotta get those Kraut shits back and get outta this shithole!"

"Now! Let 'em eat shit, boys!" Barker's command was succinct and distinct, if not crass.

"That's our cue. Let's go!"

The men leapt from their cover, utilizing their escort vehicles for cover, taking both potshots and aimed fire are the enemy. The area seemed to fly by as she sprinted past, yet a few choice details managed to stand out to the young huntress. A sergeant had fled back to cover behind a truck, cursing up a storm as he frantically attempted to clear a stovepipe from his submachine gun. A young man fumbled with a clip of ammunition, accidentally sending it tumbling into the grass. Enemy fire kept him from retrieving the cartridges, forcing him to advance with the others, albeit with an empty rifle.

Still, they were making a significant bit of headway. Ruby noticed a sharpshooter creeping out from behind a bush to their rear, screaming, "Get some!" every time he fired a shot from his bolt-action rifle into the enemy position. A few soldiers were even able to set up bulky-looking machine guns on steel tripods, which belched out .30 caliber ammunition at a steady pace, roaring at the enemy entrenched in the landscape.

Ruby crept along the hedgerow with about half the American force, letting loose her own rifle's fury at the enemy's position periodically. As she advanced, she knew she'd been killing the enemy - men, people. As she advanced, men around her were falling. She told herself that it was stumbling over the uneven ground. At the worst, they were just flesh wounds, right? Nothing the medics couldn't fix later. As she advanced, she felt a bullet strike her every so often, tearing a neat hole in her clothing - _gonna have to fix that up later_ \- , but ricocheting off of her body thanks to her Aura, leaving her with only a stinging sensation.

As she advanced, she concentrated purely on putting one foot forward. The battle bled away into the back of her mind as she refused to halt for even one second. Eventually, the incoming fire bled off as the enemy's attention became split between the machine gunners of the group with the vehicles and the advancing group. As a result, the group came to the final stretch leading up to the farmhouse.

However, they were met with a highly unwelcome surprise. Weapons fire opened up from the windows of the house, nearly instantly cutting down a solid fraction of the men that marched forward with Ruby, Smith, and Barker. The survivors of the initial onslaught dove to the ground and crawled to cover before retaliating in kind, peppering the old wood house with supersonic bullets.

"Donahue! Collins! Smith! Fuckin' anybody!" Barker screamed, "We're gonna flank around! Hit 'em round the back! Everyone else, keep the pressure up here!"

A chorus of strained "Yessirs!" answered back, and a sizable portion of the assembled soldiers moved over to Barker's position, ready and awaiting the signal to move. Indeed, they were to flank via a small trench created by a beaten down, horse-trodden path running around the perimeter of the old home. It was barely enough to cover the men if they crawled, albeit single-file and slowly.

They got to it, and Barker, along with his small retinue of men, moved through the trench, taking advantage of their allies' covering fire. Ruby watched them go, and kept firing and reloading to keep the Germans down. Ruby noticed she was almost down to her last clips when she heard thunderous, sudden _BOOM_ s from grenades emanate from inside the house. A good majority of the incoming fire from the house was suddenly halted.

A man Ruby recognized as Sergeant Preston from before shouted, "Choppers and Greasers first! In the house! _Move_!"

The men let out a fierce battle cry as some of them charged, the ones with submachine guns and shotguns moving in first. As such, Ruby was left outside, continuing to suppress weapons fire from the upper floors with the riflemen. Through the windows, she saw muzzle flashes blink by, and green fatigues flashed every so often through the grimy glass. Finally, the incoming fire stopped; they had taken the house. Ruby and the riflemen moved through the shattered doorway. There, the group reconvened and Barker, Smith, and Ruby met up once again.

Barker raised his voice so that all the soldiers in the small group could hear. "Alright, everyone! The Krauts in the woods are the only thing keeping the rest of our boys from moving up, so while they keep 'em busy, I want you to strike 'em from here! We'll make them retreat all the way back to Berlin, or we'll make 'em _dead_!"

"YESSIR!"

The men scrambled to the windows and took aim at the enemy position. If their guns still had any safeties on, they weren't so anymore, that was for sure. Ruby herself leaned through the doorway and glared down the ring and post of the iron sight.

"FIRE!"

Without hearing protection, the men's guns were absolutely deafening, but that didn't matter. One doesn't require their ears to shoot with their eyes, after all. Ruby fell into another rhythm of shooting, reloading, and shooting once again before all of a sudden, Barker called for a cease-fire. The guns finally silenced, shortly followed by the friendly machine guns in the hedgerow. Now, the only gunfire still audible was the Germans' sporadic, increasingly-distant rifle fire.

"They're retreating!" someone called out in jubilation.

A cheer rose up among the soldiers. They weren't out of the woods yet, both figuratively and literally, but there was little harm in celebrating. Ruby clicked the safety back on on her rifle and slumped down against the battered and splintered wood grain of the wall. Her body's energy, purely sourced from her adrenaline reserves at that point as she could no longer tell if she had eaten last night or last week, vanished in its entirety. She knew this would be far from the last encounter they would have.

Yet, just how many more would they be able to take? All the blood, all the sacrifice, all the lives, for just 100 yards more?

* * *

 **A/N: So yeah, that's my reintroduction into this whole thing for the new year. Hello to you all once again!**

 **So I spent a lot of late last year getting my Eagle Scout paperwork in into the BSA. That included the project all Eagle Scouts have to do, as well as my remaining merit badges, as well as a packet full of just paperwork to complete before I had to go in front of a board of review for my final rank. I did make it though, so I am now an official Eagle Scout!**

 **Hooray!**

 **Also, school was a pain in the ass to deal with, particularly, and ironically, my English 101 course had me by the wringer, taking up all my time and mental faculties in order to just survive. But I did, and with straight-A grades, so I'm happy about that.**

 **Had a good Christmas, too. As an 18-year-old American, I can own guns. So I got guns. If anyone's interested in knowing what I got, I received:**

 **\- An old M24/47 Yugoslavian Mauser 8mm rifle that I got some accessories for and put a No-Drill-Tap scope mount and scope onto.**

 **\- Also, a 12 Gauge Browning Auto-5 from 1952 in pretty good condition (sweet shotgun, that one. It's the 12G Automatic in Battlefield 1),**

 **\- And I finally took possession of a .45 Rock Island Armory 1911A1 that my dad's been holding onto for me.**

 **Pretty neat, huh? Enough about me. Well, sorta. I'm back, and I have many new ideas for stories. Been thinking about writing some Familiar of Zero, Blazblue, and XCOM related stuff. What do you guys think?**

 **Beta Read by: CrazyQuilava**

 **Read, Review, Favorite, and Follow!**

 **-AnonymousInsomnia**


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